Blog

04/18/2009 By Jason Bean

As Heard On TV

Amazon.com music has released a new feature or grouping of music on their website. It’s called “As Heard On”, and the entire section features those songs you’ve probably heard on TV shows, commercials and movies. Many of the songs featured now are the original artists performing those songs you’ve been hearing one of the American Idol contestants singing every week.

Without a doubt a great way for Amazon.com to capitalize on the popularity of American Idol, and continue getting their own piece of the downloaded music marketshare from iTunes and Apple.

Above and beyond American Idol though, how many times have you been watching TV and heard a song in the background of a scene or in a commercial and wondered what it was or who sang it. Perhaps my best example is the old eToys.com commercial that featured “Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

What Amazon.com could really do to make this a great service though would be to allow you to search for songs by show title or commercial topic. Perhaps even putting in a date and time of the show you were watching to try and find the associated song. Now THAT would be cool. Almost like song tagging available on HD Radio and other services.

Go uncover some great music that was “As Heard On” by Amazon.com yourself

04/18/2009 By J. Bean

Sunny Days, Baseball and The Flip Camera

It’s that time of year again. Time to spend some hours at the park watching your kids play baseball and other sports right? That’s exactly what I did today and it was absolutely gorgeous here in Indianapolis. This is the second season my son will be playing baseball, but it’s the first year I’ve been able to get video of him and his team playing on my Flip Ultra video camera.

It’s absolutely perfect for this kind of stuff and came in really handy today. I was able to quickly get clips of each of his team members batting that I’m sure their families will enjoy seeing once I get them posted to Vimeo, my preferred online sharing location for video. The quality is just so much better than what you get on YouTube.

The Flip is just handy for pulling out of your pocket and grabbing a quick video of something you’d like to remember or share with others. In my opinion it’s even handier than my digital camera most of the time. It’s almost single button operation allows you to quickly pull it out, turn it on and almost immediately start recording.

One area I think it could be improved on though is the ability to choose more locations to upload your video from the Flip software you use to manage the files. Vimeo isn’t one of the locations currently specified, so I have to do stuff a bit manually.

04/17/2009 By J. Bean

Windows 7 Coming in 6 Versions

It seems Microsoft still missed one lesson it should have learned from Vista. The new Windows 7 operating system will be available in six different versions when it’s released. Microsoft will still release all of them on a single media disc though so that when you realize you got the wrong version you really needed it shouldn’t be too hard to upgrade to the next one.

Windows 7 Starter Edition
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft says most home users should probably go with the Windows 7 Home Premium version and business users will more than likely go with the Professional or Enterprise version depending on the features they may need like file encryption and higher network security.

I think Microsoft would be smarter to release three versions, at least once just to see how it’s received from the community and their customers.

One version should be their really lite version, in this case the one they intend to be used by more developing countries. Priced very cheaply, but still available in developed countries for those individuals that would just like an up-to-date operating system that’s secure and supportable. This version should also be extremely light-weight and very skimpy on sucking up system resources.
One version for your average home user. Everything the home user would need. Basic operating system applications for managing, maintaining and security their system. Get them on the Internet, connect to a home network and enjoy all the digital media that everyone is producting and sharing these days.
One version for business use. Across the board, simple to manage, install and secure. Obvious ability to connect to networks and be managed over the network. All the security you would need and the ability for any component to be locked down and restricted access by the end user.

Now wouldn’t that be nice? It would make sense and I’ll bet they could increase the prices just enough to cover what they might expect to lose, but the average Joe and corporate Joe would appreciate the simplicity of the decision on which version they need.

Source: Windows 7 to Ship In Six Different Versions

Blog

Footer